How the Patriots got where they are: College draft edition

TN patriot fan · Jan 23, 2020

Deus Irae said:
That's not a relevant question for the thread.

Didn't you see Duke Dawson and Derek Rivers and all those other amazing draftees making all those game-turning plays in those SB wins?

TN patriot fan · Jan 23, 2020

Serious question: how are our scouts still employed? I get that BB and Caserio shoulder some of the blame; but I just can't fathom anyone being that unfathomably bad at his/her job and keeping it. Based on the article on the home page right now about our scouts gushing about another slow, can't-get-separation receiver, it certainly appears that said scouts are a significant part of the problem.

203Pat · Jan 23, 2020

primetime said:
The big issue with this era of Patriots drafting is the lack of any S-tier talent, the true gamechanging guys who sit around for 10 years and serve as your true blue chip moneymakers. But even A-tier talent isn't really there either.

In the early part of the dynasty you had Brady, Seymour, and Wilfork in that S tier with some legitimate solid A+ guys and As like Samuel, Faulk, Warren, Light, Branch, Givens, and Wilson.

In the next era, starting in 2005 and ending in 2009, your S-tier talents are Slater and Edelman but neither showed up until the end (and his talent doesn't emerge until the next era anyways). It's a pretty weak era for drafting, with Mankins, Mayo, Vollmer, and Gostkowski as the only A level guys. Chung's a weird border case because his career's an A but he had to leave and come back to realize it.

Then you have the next five years, with Gronk as the obvious S-tier. Hernandez probably deserves a mention in that tier (or at least an A+) as well for the period of time he played. McCourty, White, Mason, and Hightower are also an A+, and Flowers (left after rookie contract), Solder, Ebner, Harmon, Ryan, and Cannon were solid As. (Chandler Jones is a weird case as well, an A+ career but more like a B for the Patriots given draft position and return.)

In the current era, Thuney is an A but the fact he probably won't stick around after his rookie contract prevents a higher grade. And he's a guard, probably the most replaceable position in football, where the difference between an All Pro and a solid guy is pretty small in terms of outcomes. Wynn has the potential to be an A+ or A player. Maybe Bentley if he continues an upward trajectory. Otherwise, yeah, everyone else to this point is either too soon to call (anyone drafted in the last couple seasons) or a B type at best (think Roberts or Karras, tough to argue with getting a solid player in the 6th round but both are at best a replacement-level starter).

The thing that worries me is we aren’t finding some of those guys to slide into crucial positions. Granted we didn’t always fill each of these positions in the draft we always seemed to have guys waiting in the wings. We went from Troy Brown, to Wes Welker, to Edelman in the very important slot receiver role. Now with Edelman running on fumes we don’t have anyone to fill in after whiffing on Humphries. Same with tight end. They knew Gronk flirted with retirement at the end of the 2017 season but didn’t draft anyone to develop and take over when he did leave and we ended up with borderline NFL players.

Now we are in a spot where we don’t have a ton of cap room, have one of the oldest rosters in the league, and have no real speed at any skill position. We should have a stable of young cheap players ready to step into starting roles taking over for veterans ala Solder/Light, Edelman/Welker, Gronk/Watson. Instead we are ending up with second and third round picks that are healthy scratches 90% of the season.

Deus Irae · Jan 23, 2020

203Pat said:
The thing that worries me is we aren’t finding some of those guys to slide into crucial positions. Granted we didn’t always fill each of these positions in the draft we always seemed to have guys waiting in the wings. We went from Troy Brown, to Wes Welker, to Edelman in the very important slot receiver role. Now with Edelman running on fumes we don’t have anyone to fill in after whiffing on Humphries.

I'm trying to stay out of this for a bit, in order to let it grow organically, but I'll interject just a bit about this, with two points:

They also had Amendola to help continue the slot/not slot role, Edelman style, but he's moved on prior to retirement.
They seem to have confused that fact that they were able to get lucky about Brown/Welker/Edelman in terms of draft capital spent bringing those players into the NFL with the idea that they don't need to invest draft capital on the position. Getting lucky twice, and paying for someone else's luck once, is not the same as cracking the code. That seems to have eluded them. There are several examples of low/non draft players panning out well as slot WRs, but there is nowhere near enough of such players to be expecting to find one. If it was that easy, the Patriots bench would have been littered with them since the early-mid 2000s.

slam · Jan 24, 2020

Here's the compilation I did comparing every team's draft in this decade, calculating the aggregate Career AV (Approximate Value) score of players drafted by each franchise. I wrote about it in this thread.

These two things are true:

The Patriots are #2 overall in combined AV this decade, only behind Seattle. I expect that ranking to fall slightly, but not out of the top ten. The Patriots are better at drafting than people on this board generally think (or else other teams are worse). The average Pats draft pick has netted the team 12.4 points of AV, which is good for 6th ranked despite drafting towards the end, penalized picks, etc. If Bill is bad at drafting then so is everyone else, Seattle excepted.

That said, the return on their past three drafts have been very bad so far. 2017 is dead last and likely to remain that way, as they traded out of much of it and what is left is Deatrich Wise and nothing else. 2018 they're 26th out of 32 but I expect that to improve as Wynn and Michel are full-time starters and Bentley may join them. 2019 is way too early to tell.

One thing to note to adjust people's overall expectations of what drafts usually bring to teams. Netting three decent starters out of a draft usually makes it a top ten draft for that year. Take the Pats 2004 draft for a historical example. The Pats drafted Vince Wilfork, Ben Watson, and absolutely no one else of note. That alone was good enough for the 10th best draft in teams of cumulative AV in the league that year. If Wynn, Michel, and Bentley have the career equivalents of good not great players Solder, Ridley, and Spikes that alone makes 2018 an average draft class at worst.

More discussion about this in the thread linked above.

randomk1 · Jan 24, 2020

That career AV stat seems so flawed. Don't see how it relates much to wins and impact.

Deus Irae · Jan 24, 2020

randomk1 said:
That career AV stat seems so flawed. Don't see how it relates much to wins and impact.

The whole AV thing is just silliness on the part of PFR. It's a sucker's stat.

TB_Helmet · Jan 24, 2020

randomk1 said:
That career AV stat seems so flawed. Don't see how it relates much to wins and impact.

What would you propose as a better metric?

randomk1 · Jan 24, 2020

TB_Helmet said:
What would you propose as a better metric?

Rather a tier list of players vs average draft position or something like that.

That career AV list has Ted Larsen career AV 36 nvm that he added no value to this team vs Gronkowski 69. Chandler Jones adds basically Gronk value but he means nothing to this team really.

DarrylS · Jan 24, 2020

FCB02062 said:
Folks need to look at Bill's Cleveland drafts....bad, bad, bad, bad and bad

What BB or any team did from 1991-95 is completely irrelevant to his discussion on every level..

DarrylS · Jan 24, 2020

TheAdultintheRoom said:
How many SBs?

Despite you being criticized that is how you judge this team.. the draft is only one aspect of how this team is built..

The 2017 draft was poor as they had 4 picks.. #'s 83, 85, 131 & 211. It is as though it never existed on the field with Rivers and Wise the only ones who were noticeable.

Deus Irae · Jan 24, 2020

DarrylS said:
Despite you being criticized that is how you judge this team.. the draft is only one aspect of how this team is built..

The 2017 draft was poor as they had 4 picks.. #'s 83, 85, 131 & 211. It is as though it never existed on the field with Rivers and Wise the only ones who were noticeable.

The first sentence of your post makes no sense in the context of this thread. Literally none.

DarrylS · Jan 24, 2020

Deus Irae said:
The first sentence of your post makes no sense in the context of this thread. Literally none.

Would not expect you to understand.. but it really does not matter.

TinhWoodhead · Jan 24, 2020

They just need to hit the jackpot once every 15-20 years

Kontradiction · Jan 24, 2020

DarrylS said:
Despite you being criticized that is how you judge this team.. the draft is only one aspect of how this team is built..

The 2017 draft was poor as they had 4 picks.. #'s 83, 85, 131 & 211. It is as though it never existed on the field with Rivers and Wise the only ones who were noticeable.

And roughly how much of that core was drafted between 2015-2018? Because, as far as I can tell, the core that was responsible for those championships was Brady and the base built from 2009-2013. Simply put, you don’t have a vacuum of talent on the offensive side of the ball if you’re drafting well there in recent years. Just doesn’t happen.

p8ryts · Jan 24, 2020

FCB02062 said:
That is a bunch of crap, likely bottom quarter of the league - and that's being generous...

People forget , perhaps on purpose, that Bill Belichick drafted a ****ing FULLBACK in the first round...and has spent a cavalcade of second Rd picks on has beens and never will bes...

Don't count on Bill drafting the Patriots into a 12 win club if Brady tells Krafty Bob to take a hike...

Boy we will be glad when that lousy coach Bill Belichick retires, then maybe we will have a chance at winning a Super Bowl. It doesn't matter that he won 6 of 9 in 20 years we just wish he would win the draft every year.

Triumph · Jan 24, 2020

203Pat said:
A little early to give them a grade at all.

I like to look at it like did the Pats find someone good at the position? Yes

In year 1, dd the player get on the field preferably for 16 games and play well? Do his job. Yes

Do the Pats need to spend resources at the same position in the subsequent draft or FA? No

203Pat · Jan 24, 2020

Triumph said:
I like to look at it like did the Pats find someone good at the position? Yes

In year 1, dd the player get on the field preferably for 16 games and play well? Do his job. Yes

Do the Pats need to spend resources at the same position in the subsequent draft or FA? No

I won't argue if that's your reasoning. There are also guys like Deatrich Wise or Malcolm Mitchell who I thought would blossom but either regressed or got derailed by injuries.

Patstopia · Jan 24, 2020

Just keep us going to the SB and they can draft who ever they want. I am sure the Browns have a much better individual draft for whatever that is worth.

TB_Helmet · Jan 24, 2020

randomk1 said:
Rather a tier list of players vs average draft position or something like that.

That career AV list has Ted Larsen career AV 36 nvm that he added no value to this team vs Gronkowski 69. Chandler Jones adds basically Gronk value but he means nothing to this team really.

How would you assign players to different tiers? Honest question. You need some way to quantify their value.

(Also, hilarious that Gronk has an AV of 69!)

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